


neither law, nor love, nor league of swords

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Coping, Good Dad Curufin, Good Uncle Celegorm, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insanity, Misunderstandings, Not coping, RC can't not write Edrahil, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: It was odd, was it not, howfully deeply completelytheir Oath permeated their lives.Or no, perhaps it was not odd at all, considering what they had done and how far they had come to do it.(ficlets cross-posted from tumblr for Fëanorian Week 2018)





	1. dead weight (Maedhros)

Eventually his absence from the hall must have been noted, for Makalaurë emerged to join him. His footsteps were muffled by the building snow as he came to stand at Maedhros’s side.  

“It is cold, up here,” his younger brother said slowly, after a few moments’ silence.

“Ever the observant one, aren’t you.” It _was_ cold atop the tallest battlements of Himring, and the gathering snow did nothing to ease this, although why Makalaurë imagined that mattered to him –

No. Maedhros did not care. He did not.

 “It would probably be better if you came back inside,” Makalaurë said. It took him less and less time each night, to get to the wheedling. “For your health, if nothing more.” 

“Health?” He snorted in derision. “It would take more than a little winter bluster to hinder me.”

“I am certain.” Duly rebuked, Makalaurë fell silent quickly enough.

But he never stayed that way long.

“What do you imagine you will see, Maitimo, if you look to the north every night?”

 _Maitimo_. He hated that name, hated that they persisted in using it. They thought it honored him, recollected the person he used to be? It didn’t. It was the name of a creature known for his beauty, his form, his figure. It was not the name of a creature who had long since realized that such so-called gifts were not enough to support his place, and indeed, were only ever the first things torn away.

 _Maitimo_. It was not his name. Maybe it never should have been. But either way, it was dead to him, and it should have been dead to all of them in turn.

Too late, Makalaurë realized his mistake. “Maedhros. I am sorry. _Maedhros_.”

He said nothing, and pretended that he could not hear Makalaurë murmuring his proper name under his breath, as if committing it to memory.

_(he had a bard’s memory, Makalaurë, and a bard’s voice. He could not have forgotten a single, simple word; he need not have spoken loud enough for Maedhros’s ears to hear him, unless he so chose)_

They stood in silence some moments longer. The snow was slowly increasing in force; the plains beneath Himring Hill were wiped from view by swirling sheets of white. Makalaurë’s breath hung in the air, pale and silent as a ghost, before it too was snatched away.

Eventually Makalaurë must have realized that he could not outwait him, and he turned away, as if to take shelter within the fortress once more. But he put a hand briefly to Maedhros’s arm as he went.

“I left the Gap that I might see how you fared, brother,” he said softly. _(So. Still he would not use Maedhros’ right name.)_ “Not that I would have to watch you freeze to death some night in imagined penance.”

He had to laugh. Either Makalaurë’s jabs were losing their sting, or else Maedhros himself had lost –

No. No. He had lost nothing that was not better gone.

“Is that the best you can imagine? That I must take on the suffering of all those who chose, of their own free will, to follow us into our madness?”

If his breath came, or hung in the air, then it could not be seen. Not like Makalaurë’s.

“What else am I to think?” Makalaurë asked, heavily. His hand lifted from Maedhros’s arm. “Who else would you do penance for, or what else would this nightly watch be in service of? But Nolofinwë’s host survived, brother – _you_ survived. We yet live. Please. Come inside!”

“Inside” it was warm. “Inside” he could feel every limb he had, and some that he did not. “Inside” –

Well. “Inside” it was harder to remember where he was.

As far as he could remember, his Maiarin tormentor had only channeled heat – fired iron, naked flames, the warmth of hand and whip and flesh. 

If he could feel the cold, then – then perhaps he was safe.


	2. the song of our people (Maglor)

They were all trapped, and not just in the world – not only upon these far shores.

Oh, no, it was far worse than that. They were trapped in a song. In the Song.

It was all right there in their very mythology – how could anyone have missed it? How could _he_ have missed it?

Makalaurë could have shouted with laughter at the delicate, subtle cruelty of it, and the only thing that stayed his mirth was his ignorance of how far up it started. Did it come upon them from the Valar? Those beyond the Sea, from whom they had been sundered for all time? Or perhaps from higher up still, so that the Powers that Be were just as trapped in its patterns as were Makalaurë’s own?

Imagine that – the Powers, trapped too! What a thought!

He smiled, distantly, and before him Nelyo seemed to stand taller, shout louder. Makalaurë couldn’t make out what his older brother was saying, unfortunately, but surely it would become clearer when some action was needed from him.

He was a player in a song, after all – the Song – as much as they all were. And Makalaurë had some purpose to play, and the Song would let him know when it was time to stand up and play it.

“- they turned upon us, Makalaurë, they are slaughtering our rearguard and I need to know that you can hold the command for I have no one else-“

A- _haaaa_. See? The Song had told him what he was to do! Someone else was to die, and Makalaurë was to be the one to wield the blade. Again! Again!

He stood, smiling, and nodded to his brother, letting him know that he was ready to play his part.

Again. Again.

Nelyo still seemed to be shouting, but his voice had faded out again, so Makalaurë paid it no mind – the Song would have made him audible, if it was something that Makalaurë needed to know. But there was a roar in the distance, Makalaurë could still hear that much, and since it seemed to be coming from the right direction, that must have been where he was meant to go.

With one last nod to his brother, he laid down his harp and took up his sword. Nelyo’s mouth was still moving as Makalaurë walked away.

Every song had its rhythms, its rhymes, its refrains. He seemed to be part of the bridge – transitioning among verses, or themes, but never quite meriting the importance of one himself, and certainly not part of the central chorus.

Ah, well. Perhaps such ignominy was what he deserved, for not having seen the Song, acknowledged it, sooner. Void, he could not even tell what manner of song it was yet. And he was called a musician.

Some musician!

He mounted. He rode. He shook his head at his own willful ear. The roar grew louder as he went, and soon his horse, trained for war as it was, would take him no further.

When he dismounted, his boots were stained red by the blood of his own people.

A lovely touch, very apt. Another score for the Song!

Perhaps It was an epic, Makalaurë thought – an epic demanded a vast setting and multiple players, all of which they had in spades. Setting: Cuiviénen, Valinor, Beleriand again. Players: the Noldor, their Moriquendi brethren of all stripes, every bird and beast beneath Morgoth’s yoke. Check and check!

The enemies attacking their rearguard were Men. But Men were supposed to be their allies, were they not?

One more score for the Song!

Or perhaps It was a romance, a ballad, Makalaurë mused, his impartial blade making its usual quick work of all within range. Such a song demanded a person of interest upon whom to focus, and all manner of fit trials and travails to test his mettle. Hmmm – harder to determine than the epic, certainly. And whose romance would it be, anyways? Upon whom did all this turn? Certainly not Makalaurë himself – perhaps Atar? Nelyo? No, still too low within the grand scheme of things – _all_ in a romance turned upon its focus. Hmmm. If anything, it was probably the Moringotto’s himself.

A third score for the Song!

And then there was a face before him that he knew, and Makalaurë frowned slightly even as he cut Uldor down.

Yes – these Men had definitely been their allies. Hmmm. A fine motif indeed, betrayal, but all kinds of songs had that – it wouldn’t tell him anything about what manner he was trapped within.

His blade sank deep, and true, and Uldor screamed.

When he wrenched his blade free, the Man fell. When he wrenched his blade free, the Man died.

When he wrenched his blade free, the Man too was free.  

And Makalaurë, sighing, was left behind to be consumed in the next cycle of the Song.


	3. soft, and low (Celegorm)

 

Praised be, Celegorm heard the soft noises first.

And praised be, he seemed to have been the only one.

But then Curufin twitched, and whirled as if he had imagined he heard something, and Celegorm knew, with a terrible sinking certainty – if he did not move in first, then nothing good would come of it.

Only bad, and worse, and worse.

“There is no one here,” he told his brothers.

“Oddly enough, Tyelko, I _had_ noticed that, but unless you have a better idea then I imagine we should _start_ here.” Curufin’s voice was little more than a snarl, for all that his stride remained elegant, as neat and clean as his sword was bloody.

Caranthir’s rage had never been left him quite as eloquent. “ _Where. Is. He._ ”

Curufin’s smile was crueler than any predator’s teeth could have been. “When we find that whelp, brothers, I demand the honor of the first blow. Atar’s honor in Atar’s image, yes?”

And there were those tiny noises again, ever so slightly louder this time.

Any more, and even one who had not followed the hunt all his days would be able to hear them.

“Take different rooms,” Celegorm told his brothers. “Look for a way out.”

Curufin’s terrible smile only grew, and the sight of it tore at Celegorm’s heart. “Well, Moryo. You heard our tracker! Let us run the whelp to ground, eh?”

Celegorm turned away before he needed see anymore of the beasts his brothers had become. Leaving them to their snapping, he stole softly to the anteroom from which the sounds had come.

For the noises had been those of pups. He was sure of it.

And he had been right.

They had taken refuge behind a table – two tiny, fragile creatures, dark of hair and bright of eye, slight of build and soft of tongue.

Dior’s. They had their grand-dame’s eyes.

“Void take us.” Celegorm needed to get them out. If his brothers found them, the boys would be taken hostage. Ransomed for their father’s follies and their grand-dame’s deeds.

Where were his men, Celegorm needed his captain . . .

He knelt, some distance away, and cleared his throat, quietly. “Boys.”

He hadn’t needed to speak softly – to anyone – since Nargothrond. Since before Tyelpe had forsworn them. “Boys, please. Come here. We need to go.”

Perhaps they couldn’t speak yet? How young were they? It mattered not. They needed to leave.

“Boys,” he started again, and his heart rose to see them straighten from their trembling, and even smile, a little.

“Thank you,” he whispered, just as a voice behind him said, just as soft, “Boys. Close your eyes.”

He felt the blade at his back. He knew who it was – who it had to be – even as the boys, trusting their father, closed their eyes.

And then Dior ran him through.

He never learned what brought Curufin and Caranthir in just then – he didn’t think he’d screamed. Perhaps the boys had looked after all. But when he opened his eyes again, Luthien’s son was still and Caranthir was stiller and Curufin was choking on his last breaths and here was Seren, what had taken him so long. . .

“Please.” He clutched at his captain’s sleeve. “The princes.”

“They don’t matter now, hold tight, my lord, we have a healer coming. . .” Seren was scrambling to staunch the wound, but he didn’t understand, it didn’t matter. . . “He took you in the back, the craven, oh but I would make him _pay_. . .”

“The princes.” That was all that mattered now: Celegorm had to make him understand. “Please.”

“My lord,” Seren protested, softly.

“The princes.”

They were all that mattered now. His captain could save them.  

“ _Please_.”

“It will be done,” Seren promised. His fist clenched in the tunic at Celegorm’s breast.

Good. Then Celegorm could let go.


	4. in that quiet eveningtide (Caranthir)

Caranthir had dropped everything, everything, and ridden straight for Brethil the moment they had brought him the news. He had lashed his horse to a faster pace for every mile that it could run, and he had wished with every bone in his body that he knew how to pray.

But he didn’t know how, so he could only curse his horse, and himself, and ride.

She could not die. Even if they had been forced apart, so that he had his life and his duties while she had hers, he could not imagine a world in which she did not dwell.

Haleth could not die.

When he arrived he found that something of a small town had grown up where he last remembered only a rough camp. His brusque questions and abrupt demeanor likely warned the townsfolk that he meant every question he asked, and he was quickly directed to a small hut beyond the palisade, at the edge of the Forest proper.

He dismounted roughly, shoving the reins at the nearest boy among the gathering crowd.Probably he ordered the horse taken away, or cared for, or knackered, but he knew not and cared less, seeing only that it was trembling too hard to take him any further. His own feet would serve him better now.

An old woman answered his soft knock, and for a moment he was tempted to search her face – surely this was Haleth, surely she could still stand and walk and care for herself and warn rude lordly trespassers off her garden path, she had earned her quiet days

But the moment passed, and of course it was not Haleth. If

“Where is she?” he asked, abrupt as he had always been.

“Eh?” The old women was not cowed by him in the slightest; if anything, she seemed to the door a little firmer. “Where’s who now?”

“The lady Haleth.” He could feel himself all but shaking with impatience barely restrained.

“I don’t know you,” the old woman said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest and planting her feet more firmly. As if she really imagined that she could stop him, should he choose to pass. “Why should I say?”

He bit back the first thing that rose to his tongue, and then the second and the third as well. “I am an old friend.” Void but this was taking too long – he had to see her now, he had to know she lived, if this was to work as he intended it to then he needed as much time as could be had. . .

“Your name?” she asked, one foot now tapping as her impatience seemed to grow to match his own.

And it was that, oddly enough, that truly brought it home to him, how the years had passed until it was almost too late. For he had still gone by another name, then.

“Lord Caranthir of Helevorn.” An opening title might help his case – he truly did not wish to hurt this old caretaker – but in case the title would not be enough: “She knew me as Carnistir.”

“Huh.” The old woman looked him up and down now, considering. “She has said that much, once or twice, and I’ll admit I thought it was the fever talking, as her man never had such an odd name and she said it for a lover’s ears. Hmm.”

He should not have felt put to trial by an old woman of the Edain, and yet. Something in this caretaker’s gaze nearly forced him to avert his eyes.

Finally, though, she released his gaze. “All right, then. Come in. If you truly are her Carnistir, you’d best see her before the end.”

So it was true.

He followed her without another word, struck mute by the confirmation.

Then he saw the shape swaddled atop the rough cot, and he was sinking to his knees before he had even realized that his legs were shaking so. How could he have ever thought another woman. . .

“Please.” His voice had broken so far that it seemed nearly unrecognizable. “Leave us.”

The caretaker’s hand rested at his shoulder for a moment, and he could not even muster the strength to protest such unearned familiarity. “Only a few minutes, dear.”

Then she was gone, and it was only them once more. Carnistir and Haleth. Just as they had been before, and yet – utterly unlike they had been before.

Carnistir and Haleth – and Carnistir had almost come too late. As he always had.

He fumbled for her hand, inhaling in distress at the paper-thin skin and the juts of bone. He held it as gently as he knew how as he pressed it first to his forehead, and then to his lips.

“I am so sorry I did not come sooner,” he whispered.  “If I had known. . .”

But as much as he could have spoken with her – to her – for ages and ages, as they had done a lifetime before, there was also someone else Caranthir imagined he needed to address this night.

“Please, my lord,” he whispered.

The title felt odd on his lips, for usually it was his own, and he himself had never used it for another. He had never had Maedhros’s innate sense of when one should bow to kings or their systems; he had never known Celegorm’s ironic service to bonds, or Curufin’s singular reverence, or the Ambarussa’s innocent fumbling at respect.

And thus it would be Mandos – not Finwë, not Fingolfin, not any of the host of kings or regents he had ever known – to whom Caranthir would first address it.

“Please, my lord,” he said again, soft in that near-silence, broken only by Haleth’s faint breaths. “I know I have done you a great wrong, alongside my brothers and my father, and I know there is little recompense I can make for it. I know not what would please you, in your silent halls – song, or dance, or pleas of love – and I know that none whom you have called to yourself have ever been released back unto the world, nor ever will. But lord – o lord, I know not what I ask of you.”

And that was not even a lie, for Caranthir did not know. He knew what he should ask _(please do not punish her for her ties to me),_ and he knew what he could ask _(please let her stay with me a while longer),_ and he knew what he did not dare ask _(please take me too/instead/with her)._

“Your clemency and your indulgence for my beloved,” he whispered, finally. “And your assignment of any guilt with me, where it rightfully belongs.”

So perhaps this was prayer, he thought. And then he realized that his words were now the only noise in the room – all else was silence.

And Caranthir wept.


	5. beneath this mask (Curufin)

 

"You must see it, Tyelko. This is the only way I can -"

Keep Tyelpe safe? Hardly. Keep him happy? Even less likely. Keep him alive?

Atar willing, yes, and in the end that was all Curufinwë could really ask anymore.

But Tyelkormo was already nodding, as if he could guess what Curufinwë was trying to say. And maybe he could. "Of course, brother. Of course." 

"Good." He hadn't doubted his brother, not really, but it was a relief to hear him say it all the same. "Then go. Find Findaráto’s dog, and put him on the wrong scent. I don’t care how you do it, but drive the sense out of his head. Well? What are you still here for? Go, go! I will not need long, but we have very little time all the same."

Tyelkormo just nodded one last time, grim and mute, before he prowled from Tyelpe’s rooms in search of the Noldo who had until just recently been Nargothrond’s captain of the guard.

Still. Curufinwë trusted Tyelkormo, and usually he could count on him to override any sense of tact or diplomacy, but – the stakes here were too high for assumptions, or even for trust.

In the end, it all came down to Curufinwë himself, didn’t it. To whether he still had the strength of mind, and heart, and will, to do what he knew needed to be done.

For even as he set pen to paper, mouth pursing in concentration, Curufinwë could not push the image of Tyelpe’s face from his mind. For even as he began to commit to paper the words that would sever any last ties between them – even as he struggled to use a soldier’s tongue instead of his own – it was utterly impossible to divorce the project at hand from the circumstances that had driven it.

By Atar’s soul, Curufinwë had never been prouder of his son than he had when Tyelpe had stood up in Findaráto’s throne room earlier this day. At the time he had felt his vision narrow and his heart near stop, thinking that Tyelpe would follow him and Tyelkormo, proclaiming the Oath and decrying Findaráto’s support of their mad Edain caller – only for his vision to blur further and his heart roar in his ears when instead Tyelpe denounced _them_.

Oh, his precious child. . .

Even as Tyelpe had excoriated him, and decried him, and disowned himself, Curufinwë had been so proud of him. And the feeling was not unmixed with relief – trust the boy to find perhaps the one way he could have cut himself free of the Oath that had so trapped the rest of them, even if Tyelpe hadn’t known that was what he was doing.

So proud. Curufinwë was so proud. And it did not matter who he had to wound or maim or slay to do it, but he would push Tyelpe the rest of the way out of the Oath’s path by whatever means necessary.

Even if the one most hurt by his actions was Tyelpe himself.

 _It is not enough that you foreswore your father, Celebrimbor_. Oddly detached, he watched the Sindarin words form beneath his pen, scrawling and alien in every sense of the term as he attempted to mimic the soldier’s cant he had seen of Findarato’s captain.

 And yet, as much as they were meant to be coming from another hand, another voice, every word that dripped from the pen hurt as much as if it were being pulled from Curufinwë’s own heart – as perhaps they were.

 _Do not think that I will ever forgive you for your part in this day, or that you are welcome in this land any longer, even if I am gone by nightfall._  

His concentration was such that he did not realize he was no longer alone until Tyelpe spoke.

“What are you doing in my rooms?”

So. He would not even be able to do this through the guise of another man.

It was probably apt, Curufinwë mused distantly as he straightened from Tyelpe’s own desk. Fitting, in the greater scheme of things, that of course he would have to hurt his son himself.

 “It is nothing you need concern yourself with, for if you are here then I can tell you myself.” He crumpled the fake note from Findaráto’s captain, pushing it up his own sleeve even as he turned to face his son. He could already feel himself struggling to muster his strength, to spit the words he had so hoped could come from another voice. “I am surprised you have the stones to do it, when you are not preening before such an audience as you had this morning, but then – perhaps you imagine that Findaráto will favor and shelter you now, eh?”

Oh but his son was magnificent, blazing with all the glory of his scorn and indignation!

“I do not need a king to tell me what is right and what is wrong,” Tyelpe said harshly. “I can tell such things apart for myself quite well enough. Now. Get out.”

Curufinwë forced himself to raise a brow, instead of gathering his wonderful son into his arms. “So. You imagine that you have the authority to command me now, or to presume that you need not even hear what I have come to say?”

“It is no concern of mine what you do or do not imagine, for you have no say in my loyalties any longer!” Tyelpe cried, and oh but he shone like the sun!

This would be the greatest, the hardest, thing that Curufinwë had ever proclaimed – that Oath, that damned Oath, included first upon the list – but it would be said. For his son. “I do not care what you think you are calling yourself, but I am your right lord even if you imagine you can stop calling me your father.”

He breathed deep.

“I forbid you from leaving Nargothrond. I forbid you to speak with anyone, or to leave these chambers for any reason.

Tyelpe, brows thunderous with gathering wrath, was already drawing breath to debate this, but Curufinwë could not stay to hear it. He was already close enough to breaking as it was.

 “And I trust that you will see reason soon enough.”

And he forced himself to smile, with every appearance of unpleasant righteousness, until he could slam the door closed behind him, shutting out Tyelpe’s growing rage.

If that had worked as he hoped it would, then Tyelpe would leave Nargothrond just to defy him. And if Tyelko had succeeded as _he_ should have, than Findaráto’s captain would have been riled more than enough to reject Tyelpe’s suit to him out of hand, and Tyelpe would be prevented from joining Findaráto’s doomed quest.

And if he had succeeded, then Curufinwë would never see his son again on this side of the sea. Or perhaps ever, if the doom that Tyelpe had avoided this day came to claim Curufinwë as he had once dared it to, so many years ago.

 


	6. i'd give you my lungs so you could breathe (Ambarussa)

None of the others seemed to have noticed that Pityo had slunk away. Atar and Nelyo were too busy shouting, something about Nelyo’s divided loyalties and the need for a leader to think with his head instead of his cock, while Makalaurë stared absently into the flames, plucking idly at his harpstrings with his brow furrowed. Tyelkormo had disappeared the second there was ground beneath his feet, Curufinwë was watching the argument between his beloved father and cherished older brother with growing bewilderment, and Carnistir walked in aimless circles, unseeing, his left hand clenching and unclenching as if around the hilt of the sword he had snatched up at Alqualondë.

They were like wind-up toys, Telvo thought, that had been broken until they could only repeat the same motions, the same sounds, over and over again. In that savage firelight, the figures of his father and older brothers were uncanny, frightening, in much the same way as a shattered toy became: something that had been a comforting and familiar part of your life for so long, now warped beyond recognition and only existing to mock you, cut you, with its new and unexpected edges.  

He couldn’t watch them like this – lost, and fighting, and pacing, and broken. He picked himself up from his place by the fire and went after Pityo alone.

Of the two of them, Pityo had always been the quieter, and he could usually hide himself well enough when he needed to be alone, even from his twin. But this night, Pityo wasn’t quite able to stifle his tears of shock and of terror, and Telvo could follow the sound of them easily enough.

His younger brother had taken shelter on one of the swan-ships. With one last glance back at the broken-toy figures of his father and older brothers – one, perhaps Atar, had now picked up a torch, and was gesturing rather wildly with it – Telvo clambered after his brother.

He found him huddled in one of the bunks below deck. “Pityo?”

“I just – “ His twin didn’t look at him, didn’t reach for him, didn’t even ask why or how he had come. He just huddled deeper into himself, as if he couldn’t bear to be touched. “I just want to go home. I just want everything to go back to the way it’s supposed to be!”

From his place standing by the bunk where his brother had hidden himself, Telvo could see from a porthole out onto the beach. Unsure of how to comfort his sobbing twin without promising a lie – there would be no coming back from what the Moringotto had done to Daeratar, what Atar had said to Mandos – he simply watched, as two of the broken-toy figures down on the sand took up torches now, and moved toward the ships.

So they had finally noticed that Pityo was missing, and now that Telvo was too. Sighing, Telvo nudged at his brother’s shaking form, prompting him to move back a little so that Telvo could curl around him, hiding them both from the gaze of their broken toys for a little while longer.   
  
“I’m sorry, Pityo,” he whispered into his brother’s hair.  “I’m sorry I can’t fix it for you.”

And he was, he really was. He only had to be older than one person, his younger twin, and Telvo couldn’t even do that. There was no way he could bring back the light, or the Trees, or Daeratar, or even take Pityo back to Valinor and whatever semblance of peace they could find there.

So when he smelled smoke, and suddenly understood that no, no one was actually coming looking for them, Telvo realized that this was his chance. He held his younger brother closer to his chest, wrapping one arm around his head so Pityo couldn’t hear the flames crackling or the ships burning, and the other around his chest so Pityo would know that he wasn’t alone.

“I will fix this for you,” Telvo promised his brother one last time, and his heart lightened, a little, when his one younger brother nodded, his eyes already fluttering closed in a sleep that would soon become their stolen peace.


	7. let me count the ways (Feanor and Nerdanel)

“I’ll probably never write poetry for you,” Prince Fëanáro said, worriedly, when he was taking his leave of her after the first of their many walks along the northern shores.

“That is – fine?” Nerdanel hazarded, looking at him with some curiosity. Where was _this_ coming from?

“I mean it,” Fëanáro said, growing more agitated by the second. “I am very talented with language, it is true, but my skills run mainly to linguistics, not literature, and even within the literary realm I am best with criticism, not composition, and-“

Maybe it was a little presumptuous, to just reach out and tap him on the mouth, but Nerdanel had quickly figured out that the first prince of the Noldor wouldn’t still for anything that grabbed less than his entire attention.

Luckily, an unexpected boldness was often just the thing to do it. And it was rather a thrill to watch the crown prince go still and quiet with surprise, watching with curiosity to see what she might do next.

“Fëanáro,” she tried, with some exasperation, when his eyes had stopped crossing to follow the motion of her finger on his lips. “Where is this coming from? I have _never_ asked you for poetry.”

“But-“ They were both of age, and had been for some seasons, but confusion always seemed to drain Fëanáro’s experience right away, as it did now. “Atar said that that was what he did for Amme, and I thought-“

It had been disconcerting from the very first, to run up against the specter of the prince’s mother this way, but Nerdanel had no issue in being respectful to ghosts while also encouraging them to take their well-earned rest.

“Fëanáro,” she said again, more firmly still this time. “I don’t need fancy verse from you to prove your devotion, silly thing. In fact, knowing just how portentous you have to be about everything, I’d really rather you didn’t, thanks!”

But still the crown prince looked lost and crestfallen. Nerdanel sighed. How could she convince the most stubborn creature she knew besides herself. . .

“Really,” she told him. “Walk with me, talk with me, tell me about your linguistic ventures and listen to my complaints about the new school of thought on sculpture, and we can mutually decide who is being ridiculous, and we will be more than fine! Don’t fret about adding verse, of all things, to that mix as well – where’s the utility in that, if you already know I don’t know the first thing about it? That isn’t who we are, Fëanáro, and there’s no need to write poetry just because you imagine I’ll need it. If you are really so unsure, just ask me, and I will tell you. Yes?”

And somewhere in there it seemed that she had said the right thing, for Fëanáro was already coming down from his strange agitation, and he even beamed at her again. “If you say so! No verses for you then, beloved – I promise!”

And whatever else might have been said of the crown prince Fëanáro in the years to come, then at least it could be said that he always kept that promise to Nerdanel his wife. For the one verse that he ever did compose, an Oath and a compulsion that he laid upon his people and his sons, did not think of her at all.

 


End file.
